A few people have asked me about my policy of preferring candidates for wife and mother who have earned STEM degree(s). In this post, I’ll explain 5 goals for my marriage. Then I’ll explain 6 reasons why a STEM degree helps me to execute that plan. Then I’ll answer 3 objections to the STEM degree requirement. Then I’ll explain the relevance of STEM for a woman’s marriage roles.

What is STEM?

So, to start, STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. A STEM degree is a degree in a STEM field. This includes things like petroleum engineering, bioinformatics, and computer science. But it also includes things like economics, accounting and business. Basically, anything with math that involves solving problems in the real world. Anything that encourages logical reasoning and using evidence to sustain an argument.

My goals for marriage

So, here are my goals for marriage:

• influence the church with apologetics
• influence the university campus (students and professors) with apologetics
• be involved in politics, advocate for conservative policy
• open the house to students and neighbors to teach apologetics and demonstrate a loving marriage
• raise 3-4 financially independent and influential children

Everything I want in a wife is related to this plan. I evaluate women according to these goals, because I want my marriage to make a difference for Christ and His Kingdom. I’m flexible on plans and requirements, so long as the proposed changes result in a greater impact for Christ and His Kingdom.

How a STEM degree relates to marriage

The plan is for my wife to earn a STEM degree, marry me, and work full-time until the first child is born. Then, she stops working and becomes a stay at home mom. She could return to work after the each child reaches 5 years old. My preference is that she not return to work, but instead homeschool the children, or at least monitor their education in private evangelical Christian schools as a stay-at-home mother.

So, how does a woman’s having a STEM degree help me to achieve my marriage plan goals?

Here are 6 ways:

1. STEM equips her to homeschool influential and effective children. A wife who has completed high school and college courses in math, science, engineering and/or technology will know how to either homeschool our kids, or monitor their homework and grades so they achieve good academic results. Think of how Asian families raise high-performing children. I want that.

2. STEM teaches her to produce results in the real world, e.g. – working code that solves a problem, lab results, bridges that support a load, etc. In the lab, decisions cannot be made based on feelings or peer approval. The lab doesn’t respect horoscopes, devotions, romance novels, essentual oils, romantic comedies, “The Secret” or “The Law of Attraction”.

3. STEM equips her to argue apologetics from her experience of using reason, evidence, reality-based testing. All Christians need to know how to defend their core beliefs (God exists, etc.) to non-Christians. That means doing what works. And what works is logical argumentation supported by evidence. The best kind of evidence is scientific evidence. Then historical evidence. Confidence comes from competence at practical, real-world disciplines.

4. STEM degrees are a path to high paying jobs. Women who are debt-free are better to marry, because they don’t delay the process of buying a house and having children. Any kind of debt has to be paid off first. I’m not looking for a big spender, I’m looking for someone who can earn and save. The more children we can afford to have, the bigger our influence will be. Also, women who choose STEM demonstrate that they can delay gratification, and not be a slave to FOMO, YOLO, “living in the moment”, etc.

5. STEM equips women to find work easily, so she doesn’t feel pressured to accept a bad marriage proposal. She can move out and start saving money. She can buy apologetics books, lectures and debates. She can buy books on economics, marriage and parenting. She can prepare herself to attract the right man, and she can evaluate men to see if they are prepared for marriage.

6. Both the STEM departments AND the STEM workplaces less likely to be woke than non-STEM departments and workplaces. She will be able to hold to her convictions more easily in an environment where results matter more than having the “right” (left) opinions.

Objections to preferring a wife with a STEM degree

1. A woman with a STEM degree will not want to quit her job and become a stay at home mom during the critical period from birth to age 2, or even better, age 5.

2. A woman who takes years off for child-bearing and early childhood years will not be able to resume her job at the same level of pay.

3. Even in STEM departments, a woman will be exposed to an environment with secular left indoctrination, drunkenness and promiscuity. She is unlikely to come out of college as a virgin.

Responses to objections to the STEM requirement

Points 1) and 2) apply to every kind of degree, not just STEM. Any woman who does 4 years of college in any field will be “wasting” it if she stops working. First, in my plan, her education is to equip her to educate her children, because I trust her more than any teacher or stranger to do that important job. Teachers are not paid to produce results – they are unionized, and not paid based on performance. Second, even women with STEM degrees would generally prefer to work part-time or not at all. They want to stay with their young children. Third, we don’t need the money. That’s why I suffered through my BS and MS to earn 6 figures and have a 7 figure net worth. We don’t need her to work.

For point 3), I’m not saying that EVERY woman who graduates with a STEM degree is perfect for marriage. I’m saying that a STEM degree helps to have a marriage that is influential for Christ and His Kingdom. I’m open to other majors, so long as they address the concerns and goals I specified. I’m even open to a different plan. But the overriding concern is that the marriage count for something for the Boss. Even with a STEM degree, the man still has to ask the woman questions about politics and parenting. He still has to evaluate her sobriety, chastity and frugality. A STEM degree is just a starting point.

The difference STEM makes for apologetics

I think it’s obvious that having a wife who has taken courses and even worked a few years before the first child arrives helps her to be able to educate her kids and / or monitor their performance. But it also allows her use apologetics more persuasively on the university campus, in the church, and if we open up the home to college students and neighbors for movies / meals / discussions.

For example, take the fine-tuning argument. A knowledge of physics and chemistry helps you to explain why changing the fundamental forces results in a universe that does not support complex, embodied life. A knowledge of probability theory (e.g. – product rule) helps you to argue for intelligent design in the origin of life. And what about logic? Even in computer science, we had to study symbolic logic, the rules of inference, conditional proofs, Bayes’ Theorem, etc.

My wife’s job is to make the big picture of education clear to the kids, so they know what they can do in the real-world with what they are learning. So many Christians underperformed in school because they didn’t know the relevance of what they were learning for the task of defending their Christian worldviews. My wife’s job is to know how the material being taught relates to real-world goals, like defending Christianity. This is how parents produce children who grow up to be William Lane Craig, Stephen C. Meyer, Luke Barnes or Michael Licona. Boldness comes from knowledge.

Conclusion

First, I hope this post convinces women to start planning for their marriages early. You need to know things that matter for two reasons: 1) to attract a quality man, 2) to evaluate men and filter out the good ones. That means you need to know things like apologetics, politics, etc. Having money helps to buy learning material.

Second, I hope this post convinces men to stop choosing women based on youth and beauty. Your choice of wife will have a huge effect on your influence. Choose a capable, competent partner who complements your strengths with different strengths. Men spend their days in the workplace, where we cannot say much about religion and politics. If you marry an intelligent conservative Christian woman, she can be your voice to the university, the church, and the public square. Not to mention raising effective children. Therefore, choose wisely.

Acknowledgements

My wise friend Laura helped me with this post. Please check out her 10-part series for women on how to choose a husband.

So, I’ve blogged before about cases from outside the United States, like this one from Canada, where the secular leftists decide to seize a child from parents, because they know better than the parents what is best for the child of the parents. I hope you took the time to pull your children out of public schools, and move to a red state. Because guess what? It’s here now.

Consider this article from June 2021 by Abigail Shrier, posted at City Journal, the Journal of the Manhattan Institute.

It starts with this:

Ahmed is a Pakistani immigrant, a faithful Muslim, and until recently, a financial consultant to Seattle’s high-tech sector. But when he reached me by phone in October 2020, he was just one more frightened father. Days earlier, he and his wife had checked their 16-year-old son into Seattle Children’s Hospital for credible threats of [self-ending]. Now, Ahmed was worried that the white coats who had gently admitted his son to their care would refuse to return him.

“They sent an email to us, you know, ‘you should take your ‘daughter’ to the gender clinic,’” he told me.

At first, Ahmed (I have changed names in this essay to protect the identities of minor children) assumed there had been a mistake. He had dropped off a son, Syed, to the hospital, in a terrible state of distress. Now, the email he received from the mental health experts used a new name for that son and claimed he was Ahmed’s daughter. “They were trying to create a customer for their gender clinic . . . and they seemed to absolutely want to push us in that direction,” he said when I spoke to him again this May, recalling the horror of last October. “We had calls with counselors and therapists in the establishment, telling us how important it is for him to change his gender, because that’s the only way he’s going to be better out of this [self-ending] depressive state.”

Got that? So if you oppose what the “experts” tell you, then you’re exposing your child to potential self-ending. And it you don’t take their advice, then they feel justified in taking your child from you. Hospital workers, social workers, counselors and therapists.

Now, most people might be tempted to panic and show their opposition to hormone blockers, and sex-reassignment surgery.

But this father was smart:

But unlike some other parents I would later speak with, Ahmed’s cool head prevailed. Believing he might be walking into a trap, Ahmed reached out to both a lawyer and a psychiatrist friend he trusted. The psychiatrist gave him advice that he believes saved his son, saying, in Ahmed’s words: “You have to be very, very careful, because if you come across as just even a little bit anti-trans or anything, they’re going to call the Child Protective Services on you and take custody of your kid.” The lawyer told Ahmed the same: “What you want to do is agree with them and take your kid home. When the gender counselors advise you to ‘affirm,’ go along with it. Just say ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, okay, let’s take him home, and we’ll go to the gender clinic.’”

Ahmed assured Seattle Children’s Hospital that he would take his son to a gender clinic and commence his son’s transition. Instead, he collected his son, quit his job, and moved his family of four out of Washington.

Was he overreacting? Here are the state laws in Washington:

Minors age 13 and up are entitled to admit themselves for inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment without parental consent. Health insurers are forbidden from disclosing to the insured parents’ sensitive medical information of minor children—such as that regarding “gender dysphoria [and] gender affirming care.” Minors aged 13 to 18 can withhold mental health records from parents for “sensitive” conditions, which include both “gender dysphoria” and “gender-affirming care.” Insurers in Washington must cover a wide array of “gender-affirming treatments” from tracheal shaves to double mastectomies.

Put these together, and a seventh grader could be entitled to embark on “gender affirming care”—which may include anything from a provider using the child’s name and pronouns to the kid preparing to receive a course of hormones—without her parents’ permission, against her parents’ wishes, covered by her parents’ insurance, and with the parents kept in the dark by insurance companies and medical providers.

But the laws are similar in other Democrat-run states, too:

Oregon passed a law permitting minors 15 and older to obtain puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries at taxpayers’ expense—all without parental consent. In 2018, California passed a similar bill for all children in foster care, age 12 and up. The California state senate is now considering an amendment to the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act that would bar health insurers from disclosing medical information to parents about their dependents, on pain of criminal liability.

Read the rest of the article, there are more frightening stories. The case of Julie and her battle with the social workers and lawyers at a youth shelter was horrifying. The second to last paragraph has some good advice for parents who have to deal with the social workers.

Going forward, parents will face challenges to from school teachers, school counselors, social workers, government workers, hospital nurses, hospital doctors, lawyers, judges and police. Any attempt to guide children with morality or wisdom will be labeled “child abuse” that could expose the child to self-ending. And then they will take the child from the parents on that basis.